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common sense is not very common
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Yeah, it's congested around Newmarket at popular shopping times (Nov & Dec rainy yesterdays especially). This has been the case as long as I can remember.
But what is generating the bad press at the Westfield mall, will be the distribution of flows out of the carpark.
When traffic is car park heavy people tend to ignore any markings / signage an just merge 1:1 (and for good reason).
But take the northern most car-park exit at westfeld (orange carpark, morrow street exit), and lets look at the impact of the stacked 1:1 merges:
Level 2 (lowest carparking in that building): gets 1/2 of the exit capacity
Level 2m: 1 in 4
Level 3: 1 in 8
Level 3M: 1 in 16
Level 4: 1 in 32
Level 4m: 1 in 64
Level 5: 1 in 128 (I think there is a level 5?)
So if that exit to morrow street under contested conditions can handle say 250 car's per hour, those waiting on the top deck are only moving forward by 2 cars an hour... while cars on lower levels are exiting reasonable quickly.
I assume the upper levels of the southern (green) carpark are not as badly impacted due to the presence of the exit ramp from one of the middle levels, direct to Mortimer Pass.
When I visit at times I know will be busy, I make an effort to park in the basements (northern/orange basement is second on the left on Mortimer Pass, Southern / green basement is on the right of Mortimer Pass. Both basements have their own dedicated exit lane / barrier (Northen to Mortimer Pass, Southern to Clovernook Rd), so don't need to merge with other floors. They typically seem to have lots more free carparking spaces than upper levels also.
One factor making this issue worse is a parking pricing model that encourages turnover (free for 2 hours, expensive after that). Means each car parking space generates more car movements than other malls like Westfeild Albany etc.
And the general road layout around the mall is sub-optimal.
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Went their this afternoon. Around 5pm, so most of new-market was uncontested.
Mortimer Pass has throughput issues regardless. - the center lane was full of queuing cars for the length of the road, despite the left and right lanes (and surrounding roads) being largely uncojested.
I note that (contrary to my prior comment) the eastern end of the road has a left turn lane, a straight and right lane & a right turn only lane (this must have been changed at some time since the current google aerial image capture).
Right turn direction is the dominant traffic flow, so this is a good move, but still not enough to move the volume of cars needed through the (fairly lengthy) phase time allocated.
The issue being, once the (per the photo above), once the two cars in the right lane, and 4 cars in the left lane have cleared the intersection, there is only one lane of traffic carrying the flow, as the right most lane is inaccessible due to the narrowing to two lanes about 50m before the intersection.
I think NZ road design dos not allow a pedestrian crossing to cross more than two lanes. Generally I am a big supporter of crossings, but I question the value of this one. There are no pedestrian entrances near it, and it is just 40m from the signalized crossing. IF we could ditch it, it would greatly improve traffic flows.
Quick & cheap fix would be to change the left lane to straight and left, and make the center and right lane right turn only. This would move a bit more traffic load into the underutilized left lane, and out of the badly congested center lane.
Re-configuring the road layout such that the right center lane feeds into the right hand lane, with the left hand lane instead splitting into two lanes could be another idea to get a bit more throughput.
Volumes of traffic here aren't unmanageable for a an intersection with three lanes, it is just those lanes aren't well managed.
In busy times congestion on Mortimer Pass is what is responsible for causing a tail back onto the motorway (gullies southbound ramp), so this should be a priority to fix.
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